


Atop the Tower

by Mhalachai



Series: Travelling, Travelling (Doctor Who crossovers) [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Tin Man (2007)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-31
Updated: 2012-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-30 09:47:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhalachai/pseuds/Mhalachai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For all that Azkadelia has seen, she may finally have found the point from which she cannot return (Doctor Who/Tin Man crossover)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atop the Tower

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the Tin Man miniseries, after Dr. Who's _Last of the Time Lords_ but no spoilers for that.
> 
> Written back in February, 2008 - this was my first foray into Doctor Who writing.

Azkadelia stood atop the tower, all of Central City stretched out before her, glittering in the dark. 

The ground was a very long way down, she reflected absently. If only she were a bird, the wind could catch her and carry her away, out of the city, out of the O.Z., away from everything she had watched burn and decay.

Everything that her hands, delicate hands covered in blood, had destroyed.

Floors below her, her fate rested in the balance. The learned men of Central City, the leaders of the Resistance fighters, all the people the Sorceress had tried to grind to dust, they discussed how to end her life.

For all that her mother argued for mercy, Azkadelia knew it was too little, too late. 

When the sun rose, they would come to her and deliver her unto exile or death. They would not offer her mercy, for the Sorceress had offered them none.

Her skirt rippled in the wind as she stood atop the tower, bare feet a handsbreath from the edge, smooth stone holding her back from the open air and the falling to earth.

_Too little, too late._

Behind her, the wind picked up as a strange sound began to echo through the night. It was not a sound from the O.Z., but Azkadelia knew it nonetheless. A sound from her childhood, before the Sorceress, before the pain of innocence torn away.

Curiosity turned her head. At the far edge of the roof, a tall blue box faded in and out, finally solidifying into existence with a whirl of wind and power. 

Azkadelia let out a shaky breath. For years, she had thought the box a faded memory, the man inside a myth.

For all that they had mystic men and shape-shifters in the O.Z., they did not have Doctors such as he who traveled in a box such as that.

The light on top of the box faded, the narrow door opened, and _he_ stepped out.

The Doctor from Azkadelia's childhood. 

He looked around, breathing in deeply. Azkadelia did not make a sound, but she knew when he saw her. She had forgotten the intensity of his gaze.

Letting out a breath, he slowly removed his hands from his coat pockets. "Hullo there," he said, the same strange lilt in his voice that had haunted her for years. "That looks mighty high up." He edged closer. "Don't suppose I can convince you to step back from the ledge?"

Azkadelia automatically looked down, to the gaping emptiness at her feet. She had forgotten her predicament for a moment, but the Doctor's words brought it all back. 

_Too little, too late._

"Seriously, I'm pretty hopeful about you backing a few steps up. That whole 'two steps forward, one step back' thing is a little backwards, don't you think?" He was closer now, closer to the nothingness than she.

The height was dizzying, curls of darkness spiraling down, down to the rooms where destroyed men decided her fate. 

A hand settled on Azkadelia's arm, gently pulling her back from the edge. One step, then two, and the emptiness before her changed to hard stone.

"Come on, just a little further back." He guided Azkadelia to the stone bench by the small door used to gain entrance to the tower. "Now, have a sit-down." He sat beside her. He looked as young as ever, hair whipped wild by the wind, and he did not know her. She could see that in his eyes. "What's so bad that you're up here on the roof?"

Azkadelia let her gaze drift back to the horizon. Already, the sky was beginning to fade to the darkest shades of indigo, heralding the rising of the first sun. "There are worse fates than falling to earth," she heard herself say. 

"Is that so?" The Doctor took her hands in his. "That doesn't sound good."

Azkadelia chanced a glance at the man, and for some reason she blushed. "You do not remember me."

His eyebrows went up and he frowned, comical and ingenuous and so very natural. "We know each other?" He looked around the tower, at the edge of the landscape in the distance, and then his face lit up. "I'm in the O.Z.! I haven't been here in years!" He looked back at Azkadelia. "You're the Princess that kept trying to sneak into the TARDIS and went through the pockets of my coat!"

Azkadelia felt herself smile for the first time in weeks. "You had the strangest candy, a Mars bar, and you let me have it."

"You were none too happy about having a brand-new baby sister," the Doctor said. "Azkadelia, right?"

She nodded. The cold night air shivered down her spine, drawing her upright. 

"And now you have grown up, Princess Azkadelia." Even seated, the Doctor managed to bow over her hands. Then smile faded from her face. "Now, tell me what's changed so much in the O.Z. that the heir to the throne would contemplate flinging herself off the roof. Or are you Queen now?"

He was just the same as ever, always asking questions in a way that demanded answers, but even so, he didn't _know._

His hands on hers were the only thing holding Azkadelia to earth. As the sky lit to dark purples and mauves, Azkadelia let the words of the Sorceress spill from her lips. This Doctor, he may judge her for her actions, but he would be fair in his judgment, she knew.

The sun slid over the horizon as she finished her tale of pain and possession. He had listened as she spoke of fighting, of giving in, of the shame of not being strong enough to save her world. 

When she closed her lips on her own self-judgment, the Doctor slipped out of his coat and draped it over her shoulders. The heat was a shock to her system. She burrowed into the coat in ways that did not befit a princess, but it was warm and she had been chilled to the core for over fifteen annuals. She hugged the warmth of the coat to herself as she waited for him to speak.

The Doctor sighed as he looked out to the horizon. "Thousands of species across the universe, and they all need to find a scapegoat for their vengeance," he muttered. "Don't they _get_ that you're not the Sorceress and never were?"

"The voices of the ones who do are drowned out by the others," Azkadelia said. She didn't know what to make of the man. He hadn't blamed her for what had happened, the way everyone else but DG had. Has she not said that she hadn't been able to fight back against the Sorceress?

The Doctor bounced to his feet, energy silently crackling around him. "That's just..." He seemed to fight for the right word. "Wrong, that's what it is! Upside down and backwardly _wrong_! A little girl possessed by big bad evilness, and they go blaming her!"

"Doctor--"

"And giving her the options of cake or death! Only we're out of cake!" He flung up his hands, nearly pitching himself off the roof. Then his face lit up and he snapped his fingers. "You know what this whole thing needs?"

Azkadelia shook her head. 

"More cake!" He held out his hand to her. "Come on!"

"Where are we going?" Azkadelia asked as she wrapped her fingers around his palm. "The kitchens?"

He smiled at her, boyish and devilish at the same time. "Now you've got it, Princess. Let's go!"

They ran through the corridors soundlessly, her feet bare and his in shoes so like DG's, his coat flapping around her legs as he pulled her on, faster and faster, and for the first time in so very long did Azkadelia feel as if she was running towards something, rather than trying to _escape_.

The arguing voices echoed up the atrium. The Doctor stopped them at the top of the circular staircase and gave Azkadelia a grin. "I do love a good banister. Want to go for a ride?"

Azkadelia blinked at him. "It's not..."

"What? Dignified? Allowed? Safe? Probably not. Shall we?"

For some reason, maybe for no reason at all, she took the Doctor's arm and let him pull her to the banister. He hopped up on the smooth railing, settled her next to him, and gave her a wink. 

"Here goes!"

He pushed off, and down they slid. Gravity pulled them down and down, spiraling to earth, only just balancing on the railing as they gained speed. 

Azkadelia bit back a scream as they continued, out of control, toward the floor. They shot off the end of the banister and the Doctor hit the ground first. Azkadelia landed on him hard.

He let out a loud 'oof'. "Talk about a crash landing!" he said. "I guess I didn't plan that far ahead. You alright?"

Azkadelia lifted her head to look at the Doctor. He looked mildly concerned, but unhidden glee lurked in his eyes. 

Her life hung in the balance, she lay collapsed on a mysterious man, feet bare and the strange man's coat covering her, and she started to giggle. She was still giggling as the Doctor helped her to her feet and straightened the coat on her shoulders. 

"Now that's the Azkadelia I remember," he said. 

Movement out of the corner of her eye caused Azkadelia to whip her head around. Her sister DG was in the corner by the doors, either eavesdropping or hiding, and she was staring directly at Azkadelia and the Doctor. 

Wide-eyed, DG hurried over to her sister. "Who's this?" she asked in a stage whisper. "And I thought they had you in your room under guard? Are you okay?"

"I've been able to get out of that room unseen since I was four annuals," Azkadelia said, emotions still riding the churning wind. "And this is the Doctor. Doctor, this is DG."

"Doctor who?" DG asked as the man gripped her hand and shook it hard. 

"Just the Doctor," the man said. "Azkadelia has told me so much about you. I suppose you're listening?"

"What--"

"To the verdict?" The Doctor pointed at the closed doors. "In there? 'Bout your sister?"

DG blinked up at him. "Yeah, but..." She took a deep breath. "Mom's still trying to get them to allow for exile, but most of them..." She looked at Azkadelia with fear-filled eyes. "Most of them won't accept anything other than a death sentence."

Azkadelia knew that it must be that way, that realistically the people of the O.Z. would accept nothing less for fifteen annuals of pain. The only thing that surprised her is how much the idea of her own death hurt. 

"Well then, I suppose that's it." The Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets and bounced on the balls of his feet. "Nothing left to it."

"What's that supposed to mean?" DG demanded. 

"It means, time for cake." The Doctor turned to Azkadelia. "Unless you want to stay. I'd recommend against it. Public executions never end well, especially for those on the block."

Since the day she had fought free of the Sorceress, Azkadelia knew that she would have to leave the O.Z., through death or exile. But the thought of exile with the Doctor, a stranger to her, was not as terrible a thought as she might have expected. In fact, it filled her with a rushing freedom, very much like sliding down the banister on the arm of this strange man. "Where would we go?" she asked. 

The Doctor smiled. "Anywhere you want. There's a whole universe out there."

"But the verdict--" DG interrupted, panic racing in her voice. 

"They can't execute her if she's not here, can they?"

"I was going to say, what if it's exile? What if she can't come back for years?"

Azkadelia broke away from the Doctor and went to her sister. She'd had DG back in her life for only a few weeks, but that had been more than she ever thought she would have. More than she could ever have hoped for, ever since that fateful day when the Sorceress had murdered little DG in her sleep. 

"What else can I do?" Azkadelia asked. "I don't want to leave but I can't stay, you know that."

"It's not fair," DG said, stubborn even while tears filled her eyes. "Mom's the queen, she should be able to clear this all up!"

"Monarchies never really work that way," the Doctor mused. "And I hate to break up the parting, but it sounds like things are closing down in there and we'd best be moving."

Azkadelia hugged DG tightly. "Tell Mother that she did what she had to do," Azkadelia whispered. "And tell Father that I love him."

Still looking rather stunned, DG managed to nod. "Will you ever come back?"

Azkadelia didn't look at the Doctor. "Of course I will," she said, and it wasn't entirely a lie. "That's us, we keep coming back to the O.Z."

In the end, she was the one to turn away and let the Doctor lead her up the stairs to the roof, leaving DG behind. 

Neither spoke until they were outside the doors of the Blue Box. "Last chance to stay here," the Doctor said. 

Azkadelia looked out at the O.Z., bright and quiet in the early morning. Now that she was away from DG, she felt her tongue loosen. "The Queen won't convince them not to kill me," she said. 

"She might," the Doctor said. "She is your mother."

Azkadelia clenched her fists in the folds of the Doctor's coat. "She is the Queen of the O.Z., and after all this time, she knows how tenuous her grip is on power."

The Doctor leaned against the Blue Box. "She's your mother," he repeated. "She and I may have had our differences--"

Azkadelia raised an eyebrow at the interpretation of the Doctor's relationship with the Queen. She'd been in the room when the Queen had ordered him from the O.Z., a threat backed up by storm magic. Funny, how that memory came back to her now, and how it didn't change her mind about leaving.

"--But she loves you. And your sister."

Azkadelia shook her head. "This isn't about love. The men in that room have fought for too long, and lost too much, to listen to words of reason. She's been out of power for too long for them to accept her words."

"A deposed queen can never really rule again," the Doctor murmured. He pushed off the Blue Box and pulled a small key from his pocket. "Here we go."

The door of the Blue Box swung open under his hand, and Azkadelia stepped into a world even stranger than her own. 

"Welcome to the TARDIS," the Doctor said, stepping around Azkadelia. He went to the center of the strange room, flicked a few switches on the large console. "Where do you want to go?"

Azkadelia stepped deeper into the room. "Where can we go?"

The Doctor smiled again. "Anywhere you want."

Azkadelia touched the edge of one column. Was it her imagination, or did the room sigh under her touch? "Can you... can we go to DG's world? The Other Side?"

The Doctor pulled a giant lever, pushed some knobs. "One trip to Kansas, coming up!" He put a foot on the console and yanked on something hard. "Hold on to something!"

The Blue Box-- no, the TARDIS, jerked and moved under her feet, happy to be moving once again. Azkadelia stumbled against the pillar, heart pounding in her throat, but not with fear.

Later, at the 'country fair' where there were such strange things as snow cones that turned her tongue blue, and screaming happy children and a big wheel they called 'Ferris', Azkadelia thought about how one day, she'd go back to the O.Z., and how things would have changed, and what it might be like to have DG as Queen, and how she hadn't even wanted to say goodbye to her mother. 

Mostly, Azkadelia wondered at how she'd had to leave the O.Z. to find her life again, and how fortune had turned out, in bringing the Doctor back to the O.Z. just before she had taken that last step, and fallen down to the earth.

  
_end. or just the beginning._   



End file.
